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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27626042">A Fork in the Path</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/julyjunejanuary/pseuds/julyjunejanuary'>julyjunejanuary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Regulus Black, POV Second Person, Regulus Black Deserves Better, but for only a second, but it's super vague, sort of stream of consciousness, the character death is Regulus, wolfstar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:00:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27626042</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/julyjunejanuary/pseuds/julyjunejanuary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You're at a crossroads in a thick green forest, and you do not know what to choose.</p><p>You know, logically, that south would be the easiest. That's the way your parents went, and that is the way you have been told to go (you remember — your mother's easy laughter and your father's kind smile, vague memories from the years before the war). Sirius managed to choose north, didn't he?</p><p>--</p><p>A question in morality, or: what Regulus sees after he drinks the potion in the cave.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Regulus Black &amp; Sirius Black</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Fork in the Path</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You're at a crossroads in a thick green forest, and he's asking you to choose: north or south?</p><p>(He means right or wrong)</p><p>(He chose north, and can you?)</p><p>You know, logically, that south would be the easiest. That's the way your parents went, and that is the way you have been told to go (you remember — your mother's easy laughter and your father's kind smile, vague memories from the years before the war). Sirius managed to choose north, didn't he?</p><p>It is raining in the forest now, and he is looking at you with expectant grey eyes and thick black hair plastered onto his forehead. You don't really understand why people say you look like twins, because can they not see the light in his eyes that is not in yours, and (and he would hate that comparison, but it's true) the way he laughs and holds himself just like your mother, only without the cruelty? You are all your father, the bystander, the coward, but he looks at you expectantly and— </p><p>You are at a crossroads in a thick green forest, and you do not know what to choose. You're soaked and shivering, and he asks you what you're doing. ('I’m drowning, can't you tell?') He's younger now, fresh-faced and unaware of the future he will face. He's telling you to hurry up, and you ask with a rasping voice how long it's been.</p><p>('oh Reggie, it's been years', he says, and it's like he's aged thirty years in a second, and he’s got a haunted look in his eyes that shouldn't be there.)</p><p>He's asking you which way you'll go and you try to tell him that you can't choose ('I can't leave, Sirius. Why can't you stay just one more year, and then we'll get a flat together, or something?', whispered in an alcove) and he tells you he loves you and you're the only one in this godforsaken family who he ever really— well.</p><p>But he needs you to choose and you try to tell him that it's too late, you've already chosen, and you should've listened to him because now you're drowning in the lake of a madman.</p><p>Maybe, if you'd listened to him, you would've known what he looks like instead of always picturing him as sixteen, bags packed and still shaking from the cruciatus (you don't remember your mother ever being that cruel, either, but you guess she always was, to Sirius.)</p><p>Now, you're fourteen and healing his broken nose (you always were exceptional at healing charms; maybe you would've ended up at St. Mungos if it hadn't been for the war that captured your childhood in a bottle and threw it in the ocean)</p><p>And now, you're twelve and watching him put up girls on his wall that get more and more unclothed with every poster. He just told you he was in love with the werewolf last night, but maybe you weren't supposed to remember that, or maybe it’s just to infuriate your parents more.</p><p>And now, you're back in the lake and you're drowning and you wish you could see him one more time just to tell him that you're (at a crossroads and maybe you chose south and first but now you're choosing north and you're) finally making the right choice.</p>
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